I may be out of my depth here, so I was hoping that someone with an applicable engineering background might be able to help, or at least steer me in the right direction. I’m not sure if this question is better posed in the Civil or Electrical engineering forums as there may be some overlap.
Our offices handle a variety of insurance claims and related litigation matters. A recent claim involved an accident where a battery case built by SAFT fell over. The batteries (also from SAFT) and case were part of a municipal rail project designed to collect and discharge power for a major city’s trains/subways. The case itself was dented and clearly needed to be replaced. However, SAFT informed us that beyond the case, each and every battery housed in the case would also need to be fully replaced. The case was actually being delivered at the time of the accident, and had never even been online as part of the overall system being installed.
SAFT provided no in-depth explanation for this decision. As far as we can tell no testing was ever performed. SAFT merely stated as a conclusion that everything needed to be replaced. Questions about the possibility of performing some examination or testing were not welcomed (with strong hints that we just did not understand what we were talking about).
As a general matter we were told that efforts to test the batteries would require their complete and total disassembly, effectively destroying them even if they were previously functional. To boot, they indicated that there was no salvage value or ability to recycle/reuse any parts. Based on their representations, an entirely new replacement unit was ultimately ordered, but we are trying to understand if this was truly necessary.
I recognize that I am not providing much detail about the battery units themselves (we haven’t received much either). That is why I am reaching out for some guidance. We are faced with a company that is claiming expertise in this area, and basing conclusory statements on that expertise.
As part of our attempts to evaluate the claim, we would be very interested to hear from any engineers especially if they are familiar with SAFT or their in-house practices. Is this normal for them? For the industry? Are there classes of batteries whose properties would match what we are being told? Does none of this make any sense?
I would appreciate any information that I could get. Thank you.